Advertising is a really big part of real world city environments, and having ads in a game (fake or otherwise) helps to bridge the subconsious gap between real world and game world. In da_trainingday I started to make some posters to put around the trains station - just go to any subway station in a modern city and you'll see that 90% of the signage is advertising. I only got as far as this one before moving onto more pressing matters:

People don't often actually notice what is written on the poster. They see a colourful rectangle on the wall and assume it's a poster, then continue shooting people. This is the little psychological nook and/or cranny that I like to play with. I like to poke fun at stuff where I can, and "Nothing but glucose" is a stab at soda, which is pretty much carbonated glucose with a splash of water. You don't need to poke fun, and you should be aware that whatever you put on these posters is going to be skimmed over and largely missed by the majority of players. That means that we should reward the few players who actually do take notice with something cool or humourous. At best any message will be subconciously embedded into the less observant players minds - which is an awesome place to be with regards to content writing.

So what do you put in a poster?Really you can put anything you want in there as long as it's PG 13, but don't be afraid to walk the line. If you want more guidance, read on.

Things like fashion, make up, food, restaurants, hotels, travel, movies and TV shows make up the bulk of advertising. Create a brand of one of these things (a name, word or a business) and make a logo. Put that logo somewhere on a poster-shaped canvas and then give it a background. Try to put extra stuff in the background - I used a radial gradiant and some bokeh stuff I had laying around on that green poster. Also think about grunge overlays, reflections and other details. Then put an image depicting the item you are trying to sell somewhere on the page too. Move all that stuffa round till you have something that looks nice. Finally, add some small print. Most posters have small print and putting it in there helps again to bridge that psychological gap.

Using references is HIGHLY recommended. Try to keep the colours simple and clear - I'll be casting lights from the posters to add colour to the environments and if you use a lot of different clashing colours the light color will be muddy and kinda useless. Try to stick to one main colour temperature and vary it for detail - you could use a deep blue that graduates to a bright azure, for instance, with a complimentary colour for details.

Also try to work slogans into the posters. Here's a few I'm making up as I go:Travel: "Meet people from all over the world! And then shoot them."Make up: "Because you're not beautiful until we say you are"Food: "Cockroaches are protein, right?"Hotels: "Bedbugs stay free"TV: "Your friends suck, use ours"

I'm all out, go crazy!

EDIT: you could also advertise video games (since we're in one) and guns (since it's a gunny kinda game)

Yeah I like the movie posters too, but I feel like we should change them up if we can. Instead of using the actual movie posters maybe mockups of movie posters would be better. Also that poster looks good Dysprogue, the simple colour scheme is what I'm looking for. And I like the 'noob' on there

They look good man, the deer one is a little tacky, might look better without the dirt texture behind it, that max payne one looks awesome though, but can you take the company logos out of it? Maybe mock up some other logos there instead? And that retro ferrari one is sweet as hell I love it. I'll put it in the game somewhere for sure! Keep em coming

Yeah man the deer one looks way better with the finer texture, and that tv one is classic. Love the slogan. Keep them coming! I have an updated version of trainingday to put in the next release, I'll load in anything you can come up with between now and then!

Quick question, what are the resolutions of the billboards on trainingday (or failing that, what would you prefer)? So far I've been doing 388x512 since that's the size of 'Nothing but Glucose' (except the max payne poster, 350x512). I noticed there are some landscape-orientated billboards too, I could do some posters for those too if I knew the aspect ratio/resolution.

As long as the image is in power-of-two dimensions you can do what you want really, just leave the unused space black. In terms of size, keep it at or under 1024, but you can do non-square sizes provided both dimensions are power-of-two (1025x512, 512x256 etc).

If you want to work towards more specific sizes I can make some stuff up and tell you the exact dimensions needed.